]]>Paulo Coelho AlvesAkira Kurosawa's Top 100https://letterboxd.com/pcalves/list/akira-kurosawas-top-100/ letterboxd-list-485034Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:08:19 +1300My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you cannot find in this list many of the titles of the films he regarded as wonderful. The principle of the choice is: one film for one director, entry of the unforgettable films about which I and my father had a lovely talk, and of some ideas on cinema that he had cherished but did not express in public. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

]]>Paulo Coelho AlvesMartin Scorsese's Film School: The 85 Filmes You Need To See To Know Anything About Filmhttps://letterboxd.com/pcalves/list/martin-scorseses-film-school-the-85-filmes/ letterboxd-list-885078Wed, 3 Feb 2016 03:13:43 +1300List of 85 films Scorsese referenced in the course of a four-hour interview he gave to Fast Company. “Some of the movies he discussed, others he just mentioned. But the cumulative total reflects a life lived entirely within the confines of movie making.”

This Billy Wilder film was so tough and brutal in its cynicism that it died a sudden death at the box office, and they re-released it under the title Big Carnival, which didn’t help. Chuck Tatum is a reporter who’s very modern—he’ll do anything to get the story, to make up the story! He risks not only his reputation, but also the life of this guy who’s trapped in the mine.

"It’s my favorite of the Vincente Minnelli musicals. I love the storyline that combines Faust and a musical comedy, and the disaster that results. Tony Hunter, the lead character played by Fred Astaire, is a former vaudeville dancer whose time has passed, and who’s trying to make it on Broadway, which is a very different medium of course. By the time the movie was made, the popularity of the Astaire/Rogers films had waned, raising the question of what are you going to do with Fred Astaire in Technicolor? So, really, Tony Hunter is Fred Astaire—his whole reputation is on the line, and so was Fred Astaire’s."

As he once explained to Steven Spielberg over dinner in Tribeca, one of Scorsese’s fears about directing a remake of this film was that, "The original was so good. I mean, you’ve got Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, it’s terrific!"

]]>Paulo Coelho Alves“If this is their idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year's.”https://letterboxd.com/pcalves/list/if-this-is-their-idea-of-christmas-i-gotta/ letterboxd-list-441275Sat, 29 Nov 2014 08:33:43 +1300